SAH Fellows

2015 Fellows of the Society of Architectural Historians

The Board of Directors names as Fellows of the Society of Architectural Historians individuals who have distinguished themselves by a lifetime of significant contributions to the field. These contributions may include scholarship, service to SAH, or stewardship of the built environment.

David Brownlee, FSAH

Citation by Dietrich Neumann

David Brownlee received both his undergraduate and graduate degrees from Harvard in 1973 and 1980. He was immediately hired by the University of Pennsylvania where he has taught for the last 35 years, since 2003 as the Frances Shapiro Weitzenhoffer Professor. Most of us have several of his books on our bookshelves: be it the sumptuous exhibition catalogues on Louis Kahn or Robert Venturi with David De Long, books on Friedrich Weinbrenner or George Edmund Street or publications that reflect his interest in local buildings—about the architecture of the University of Philadelphia, the Philadelphia Museum of Art or the new Barnes Foundation. His engagement as a teacher has been honored twice by Penn’s highest teaching awards from the undergraduates—and if his 29 PhD students were giving out awards, he would surely receive one from them as well.

David has been immensely generous with his time and engagement for our society—I have to greatly abbreviate here—he was, for example, the central figure organizing the publication and symposium “The Architectural Historian in America” celebrating the SAH’s 50th birthday—25 years ago. He was the editor designate and then editor of the SAH Journal [JSAH] from 2007–2011—certainly the most time-consuming volunteer job this society has to offer—in particular during a time when the journal migrated from one press to another and launched an online version. I know from my own experience that David’s boundless, youthful exuberance helps to make any board meeting a pleasure, and we all know and love him as a man of great generosity, kindness, and integrity. And, David is always willing to put his booming voice in the service of SAH when it is time to move attendees from the reception area to the plenary lecture.

David has won pretty much every award our society can bestow, from the Founder’s Award and Ann Van Zanten Medal in 1984, to the Alice Davis Hitchock Award from both the SAH and SAH Great Britain in 1986 (he was the only one ever to equally impress the juries of both societies) and the Philip Johnson Award in 1993. Tonight it is time for another.

It is a great personal pleasure to read this citation declaring David Brownlee a Fellow of the Society of Architectural Historians.

Keith Morgan, FSAH

Citation by Naomi Miller

Like many an O-hi-o boy, Keith's destiny lay in the East. He earned his PhD at Brown University and his MA in early American culture at the Winterthur Museum Program of the University of Delaware. When president of the Society, his most noteworthy acts included overseeing the acquisition of the Charnley-Persky House, the relocation of the office from Philadelphia to Chicago, and his greatest triumph, the appointment of Pauline Saliga as executive director.

Keith's devotion to students and their work is legion, having supervised and served on many dissertation committees in architectural history, historic preservation, landscape history and American and New England studies. A major player in the Department of History of Art and Architecture at Boston University, he teaches courses in the fields of 19th- and 20th-century European and American architecture, and is the director of the Architectural Studies Program. At the same time, he has pursued scholarly research by publishing major studies on the architect Charles A. Platt, on landscape visionary Charles Eliot, and, most recently, Community by Design: The Olmsted Office and the Development of Brookline, Massachusetts. He co-authored Architecture in Boston 1975-1990 and principal author and the editor of the Buildings of Massachusetts: Metropolitan Boston. It would be tedious to cite the numerous teaching awards, lectures, tours, honors, and services rendered in various academic and community orbits.

No finer colleague could be imagined. Above all, his devotion to family and friends is second to none. And not least, wherever he goes, he brings the gift of laughter. Mr. Boston is by dint of curiosity and participation, a global citizen.

Pauline Saliga, FSAH

Citation by Richard W. Longstreth

Twenty, yes twenty, years ago, I had recently joined the executive committee and, with my colleagues Patricia Waddy and Keith Morgan, was working on the challenges of moving the Society from Philadelphia to Chicago. Securing a firstrate executive director was a paramount concern. We received numerous very solid applications, but Pauline Saliga’s stood out. There was no doubt in our minds. Our main worry: how long will she stay. I remarked that she was likely to accomplish more in five years than many others would in ten.

Well, here we are, twenty, yes, twenty years later, and SAH is still the beneficiary of Pauline’s rigorous, astute, imaginative, and gentle leadership. Thirty years ago SAH was a rather stodgy organization, to which many of us were still devoted. Stodgy no more. It is young, dynamic, innovative, while maintaining exceptionally high standards. It has become in some respects a truly international organization. It has revived the Buildings of the United States series full throttle. It has continued to set the industry standard with JSAH. It has undertaken pathbreaking initiatives in the digital realm. Many, many people have contributed to these programs, but I think Pauline’s role has been central. She has been the driver to push the Society into new realms, and she has been the glue that has held it together. Under her leadership, between 2008 and 2010 alone, SAH has secured several million dollars in grants, a major endowment, the $1.25 million H. Allen Brooks Travelling Fellowship, and the $263,000 Donald Perry bequest.

Pauline has for so long been the eminence at SAH some of you might not realize how much she accomplished before 1995 as a curator at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago and then as associate curator of architecture at the Art Institute. She has written numerous catalogues and books, including The Sky’s the Limit: A Century of Chicago Skyscrapers and, my favorite, Design for the Continuous Present: The Architecture of Bruce Goff.

I could say much more, but I don’t think I have to. Many of you who have had the good fortune to work with Pauline know her extraordinary talents and know how much she has given to SAH.

Stanley Tigerman, FAIA, RAAR, FSAH

Citation by Pauline Saliga

When writing about Stanley Tigerman’s impact on the field of architecture and its history, one has to consider the many catalytic roles he has played. Tigerman, the architect, infuses his designs with potent symbolism that portrays the raison d’etre of each client, such as the Illinois Holocaust Museum and Education Center (2009), which literally takes visitors on a journey from architectural and spiritual darkness to light. With more than 175 built works in the US, Bangladesh, Japan, and elsewhere around the world, he still draws inspiration from mentors who include Paul Rudolph and Louis Kahn, but he always invents new structures that are wholly unique and can be read on multiple levels. Tigerman the activist challenged Chicago’s and the nation’s complacency when he co-founded the Chicago Seven, a group of outspoken young architects who challenged the dominance of corporate Miesian Modernism in the 1960s. Tigerman the curator, whose work has been exhibited at three Venice Biennales, took the temperature of the national design community with such groundbreaking exhibitions as the 1980 Late Entries: The Chicago Tribune Tower Competition. Always a champion of the new, today he is one of the biggest advocates for the Chicago Architecture Biennial, which will take place this fall. Tigerman the teacher and mentor not only directed the School of Architecture at University of Illinois at Chicago, he and designer Eva Maddox also co-founded Archeworks, an alternative post-graduate design school in Chicago that uses architecture and design to address larger social issues. Archeworks continues today as a forum that works to shape sustainable, equitable, and healthy communities. Tigerman the theorist, critic, and historian has written dozens of essays and more than eight books including The Architecture of Exile (1988), which posits that architecture can be revitalized by looking to the past for inspiration, Designing Bridges to Burn (2011), an architectural memoir, and Schlepping through Ambivalence: Essays on an American Architectural Condition (2011).

A Life Member of SAH since 1978, Tigerman has influenced generations of architects, historians, critics, curators, and clients internationally. The recipient of more than 150 awards for design excellence from the National AIA, Chicago AIA, Progressive Architecture, and others, Tigerman was given two lifetime achievement awards in the past three years from the Chicago AIA and the Architecture and Design Society of the Art Institute of Chicago. It is now my pleasure to give Stanley Tigerman the SAH equivalent of a Lifetime Achievement award and to name him a Fellow of the Society of Architectural Historians.